The latest study concerning antibiotic resistance was published last week in the journal PLoS One. It looked at livestock workers in North Carolina (the nation’s second biggest hog-producing state, after Iowa), including those in what the study’s authors called “industrial” livestock production and those on farms where the animals were raised without antibiotics and grown on pasture. In this study, the S. aureus bacteria with genetic markers most closely linked to livestock were found in far greater numbers in workers on the industrial farms.

La FDA traîne les pieds pour remédier à cette situation..

The F.D.A., which is under court order to do something about the routine use of antibiotics, has come up with a lame voluntary reduction scheme — “Guidance 213,” it’s called — acting as if it will save its real regulatory muscle for after this scheme flops. (Which it will — flop, that is.) Worse, despite repeated promises that the voluntary guidelines were imminent, they haven’t issued even those. And now, “Guidance 213 is currently in the clearance process, but we cannot predict a timeline on its release,” an agency spokeswoman wrote me in an e-mail. Period.

.. et, quelques exceptions mises à part, l’Etat aussi

That’s simply insulting. Of course, almost no one is pushing the F.D.A. to do its job. There are a handful of people in Congress; certainly some well-meaning NGOs like Pew Charitable Trusts, Natural Resources Defense Council and others; and dedicated individuals like the lawyer Bill Marler. Against them are arrayed not only Big Pharma — which is providing four times as many antibiotics to animals as it is to humans — but industrial ag, which cares only about raising animals “efficiently” and profitably.